A Lab is a unique opportunity for a company (an established firm, a start-up, or a consultancy) to marshal the brain capacity of a selected group of high-profile strategy experts in framing and solving a burning issue they have been facing, related to the conference theme. The Labs will be full-day interactive sessions in which a group of managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, and academics work together on real-life issues proposed in advance by a company. Structured interaction between Lab participants—facilitated by a core Lab team and expert process facilitators adopting design-thinking techniques—will yield interpretations and actionable solutions to the issue proposed by the company. The final actionable solution of each Lab will be summarized in a video-poster for final plenary presentations, with the support of consultants in visual representations.
How can partners in an industrial community integrate creativity and efficiency through joint capability building for improved resilience and competitiveness? This question will be tackled through investigation of three underlying themes: the influence of cultural context; different collaboration models; how digitalization can enable more effective information sharing. The LAB will be introduced by the two short live-cases of Alessi and Nautor’s Swan (introduced by managers). LAB activities will revolve around the extended enterprise with open ecosystem thinking under development at Wärtsilä, global leader in innovative technologies and lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets.
In this highly interactive session, participants will experiment one of the most disruptive ways of working used by many companies (tech and beyond) to increase collaboration, innovation and creativity in the Digital Era. Participants will engage in a collaborative exercise in small teams to develop a product for a specific customer (disclaimer: we will play with Lego!). The session will be introduced by a brief overview of the history and theory of Agile methodologies and will end with real case examples of BCG clients who have been supported in their full Agile Transformation journey to address issues and opportunities provided by digital technologies. At the end of the practical simulation participants will have the chance to leverage the collective brain power of the group to apply agile in their own context to solve critical issues (interested participants just need to volunteer and prepare a 15 min presentation).
Design is a strategic asset that enables businesses to differentiate themselves in the market by focusing on solutions tailored to customers' desires and needs. This approach builds a competitive advantage by blending the depth of customers' understanding with the breadth of quantitative insights to respond to todays' digital disruptions. To fully adopt a design-driven innovation approach, businesses must: (1) Generate original insights to stay ahead of competitors; (2) Stretch the realm of possible opportunities to serve customers in original ways; (3) Align company departments to one common mission: customer-driven decisions; and (4) De-risk their product/service investments by prioritizing initiatives through customers' lenses. In this Lab, participants will learn hands-on how to embed design thinking into their everyday business challenges leveraging real cases of BCG clients. The session will end with a group debrief to identify how to bring design thinking in your own company to tackle your everyday challenges.
